Dedicated to football lovers in Ankara (Except for those who follow Osmanlispor)

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Waiting to go over the top

Nerves a-jingle-jangling before the Socceroos biggest ever match. Tension is mounting before the battle in Stuttgart where the boys will take on Croatia.

Pretty much a draw will do it for Australia tonight (as long as Brazil don't stuff it up and let Japan win by a couple of goals) but Aussie Guus is saying he is going all out for the win. A loss will see Croatia through to the next round and I'll just cry into my beer.

It could well be a grudge match thanks to six of the Australian squad having Croatian background, while three of the Croatians were actually born in Australia. The police in Croatia have even put armed guards at Aussie striker Mark Viduka's house just in case he nets the winner and Zagreb Kanka gets out the hot tub and tries to torch the place.

While quite a few of the Australian players are on yellow cards thanks to some very dodgy refereeing decisions in the previous two matches, we don't have anyone red carded yet.

Kewell is also clear to play after being let off by Fifa who decided that telling a ref that he was "f.....g s..t" is okay as long as the referee then pre-empts Fifa by saying "that's it matey, your World Cup is over". One good point for tonight is that the referee is Graham Poll, an Englishman who many of the Aussie players know well due to playing in the premiership.

I'm feeling quietly confident but by kick-off time I'll probably be a wreck.

Expect something on the blog tonight. Just don't expect it to be coherent.

13 comments:

So off from work early, off to the Brit pub and pissed (that's the AMerican pissed as opposed to the British pissed since I haven't had a drink yet) to find that the Italy v. Czech match is being shown. Uuuuuuuugh!!!!!!

Hope we are not disappointed to find that the English channels choose to show the meaningless Brasil v. Japan. Some tings going for the Auusie screening:1. European team v. a Commonwealth one2. English will probably want to see and Aussie team not make it as far as their own3. It seems that some Croatian fans can compete in the photgenic department with the Brasilian ones. Zagreb, you in the crowd? ;-)4. This match will most likely be extremely entertaining.

This game tonight will be the most entertaining thing for Croatians!!!

By the way Oz there is 8 Croatian football players in your team and 3 Australian with Croatian background in our team. It will be very interesting because Stjepan, for instance, will keep an eye on his best friend Marko Viduka during the game. And the other best friends will watch over other Croatians on the other side. Our reporters asked Croatians in your team, how they will feel when Croatian hymn will start? They said that they will feel the same because the both hymns are theirs. Hmmm, we will see!

:-) You know what? What ever happens, Croatian players will go forward! What ever flag they will represent! Croatian or Australian! If Australia wins that will be huge score for Croatian players and for Croatia as well, in some funny way. But I hope that we will go forward under Croatian flag and not Australian.

Sorry no birthday present for you Zagreb Kankie, but you can be honorary Australian for the rest of the world cup (until we lose to Italy, probably). We have lots of Croatians already so I'm sure we can welcome another one :) Happy birthday!

I LOVE YOU ALL! :-)I was sad yesterday, really sad and I didn't feel like my birthday came at all since all of my friend were down around midnight.At least I know that my Croatians going forward and that makes me happy in a way! I hope that my next favorite team Australia will go really high!

I am really happy that I found friends like you! Really special!If someone told me that I will go and post some comment one day on your blog about Hasan and there I will find amazing people, I would never believe it.

Zagreb Kanka,Thank you for your congratulations. Your thoughts are appreciated and let me assure you that if Croatia had gone through in our place I too would have supported your lot for the rest of the Cup.

Look on the bright side though. When we take on Italy in a few days time your friends will be amazed at the level of support you will be giving for Australia.